Unemployment
among Graduated Students in KRG
The situation of unemployability in both public
sector and private sector is obvious problem in Kurdistan, and many people lost
their jobs from 2014 and 2016. Even though the KRG does not fire employees from
its governmental departments, nor does it hire any individuals, especially
graduate students in its departments. The number of graduate students increases
exponentially each year because there are many students who graduate from
public universities. The data and statistics illustrate that the problem is
getting worse. Plus, thousands of students graduate each year, and they are not
certain what the KRG will do regarding their future. In order to solve this
unemployability issue, we have to construct several alternatives and analyze
each one of them so that we could choose the best possible solution for this
policy problem. The selection method will be based on several criteria and the
consequences the alternatives bring to all the stakeholders
The first alternative would be status quo,
which is doing nothing and leave the situation as it is right now. Those
thousands of unemployed students have been suffering because of what the
current policy that KRG has been working on. And obviously, this public policy
has not done any good so that graduated students could achieve a satisfactory
life for themselves. From time to time, a lot of graduated students have
demonstrated in front of the government buildings and tried to make chaotic
situations against the government and the policy it has implemented. Therefore,
if this government does not do something different regarding this issue, the
situation will be out of the control, hundreds of thousands will be jobless in
Kurdistan. This alternative will not have any positive short or long-term
effect on the situation.
Another alternative that government could probably
implement will be hiring all the graduate students in all governmental
departments without any discrimination. One could argue that this way will at
least lead to cool down the situation, and unemployed students will not protest
against the government until another suitable solution is found in the near
future. Of course there will be at least two major problems with this
alternative. First of all, the government cannot have that amount of money to
spend on salary. KRG is already suffering because it does not have enough money
to its current employees at this time. The second issue with implementing this
alternative is that the governmental departments have surplus of employees;
thousands of employees have been hired already, and they do not have any role
in progressing the governments’ duties and responsibilities. The governments’
departments are already running out of space for their current employees who
have no or a little duties in those departments.
Another alternative will be the government could
motivate private sectors to do business in Kurdistan and bring foreign
companies so that they can invest their capitals in this region. Although
Kurdistan’s borders are not politically and militarily safe, security situation
in all the three cities in Kurdistan is stable, and KRG is doing well in
preventing its territories from attacking by ISIS or other enemies with the
help of those countries that are fighting ISIS. Therefore, KRG can be more
protective and assure other foreign companies to build facility production
inside this region. If other giant international companies’ security is
guaranteed, they will have incentives to work in KRG. Once they build their
production facilities, they will be in need for employees to mange and work
consistently. Consequently, those companies will start hiring a big portion of
unemployed students who are seeking jobs from the government. It is true that
most of the students are not eligible to get jobs in those international
organizations; however, most of those organizations have training sessions for
their new employees in order to make them productive. Also, there are a lot of
graduated students who are capable of working in those organizations and
companies without too much effort which is meant to be put by those companies
to make them qualified.
If we take the last alternative into consideration,
it will be the most efficient one among the others because it will have more
positive effects on the problem in every each one of those three criteria. If
the private sector does its job in KRG and the government implements those
regulations in favor of facilitating the private companies, the unemployment rate will decrease dramatically. It will be more
efficient for the in managing and controlling the high unemployment rate in
Kurdistan because the government will be free from all those graduates who are
asking the KRG to hire them; the private sector will take care of most of them.
Shiaw Khoshnaw
Kaiwan Aziz
Hasara Ismail
Karzan Afrasiaw
Kurdish